#and honestly as a child had such plural tendencies | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sarumansorkorphanage · 5 years

Text

It’s weird being on here again realy.

I don’t think I actually wanted to leave this plattform at any point.

One moment I just realised I had.

You see- I don’t really see myself as a tumblr person and this might be because I’m awefully biased against all of you guys without even really evaluating you.

I just asumed there were certain characteristics to a tumblr person- which I am sure the majority should have- amongst which you could find a certain level of narcissism (not the clinical form, you know, just higher levels on the personal trait-scale) and psychological issues. Or some really intense form of fandom. Or both.

So yeah- while that may or may not be true, these are the reasons why I didn’t want to be a tumblr person. I just didn’t feel I had any major psychological issues, maybe a certain tendency to fancy attention or something, but we’d all be sub-clinical on that, and my degree of fandom was in my humble opinion not worrysome at all.

So you see- no judgment whatsoever, I could even list a couple of good traits amongst which a high intellect, a certain degree of empathy and creativity (though this might be due to my filter bubble).

Now- rest assured- I did have nihilistic thoughts before and I didn’t have any suicide, self-loathing or self-harming fantasies. Not at all. So I don’t quite understand what I’m doing here, but the fact is my head seems rather troubeled and I need an outlet, so- I just felt I should come to a place where people would see me as a bit weird maybe, but most wouldn’t be either detrimental or judgmental. Even though they might be just mental.

(Yeah the pun just came and I won’t cut it because I feel it’s kinda cute.)

So- maybe it’s time to re-introduce myself. My name is- well, Saruman for you guys, sorry ^^, and I haven’t been on tumblr for about half a year or so- and actually I didn’t really plan on coming back, nor do I pan on staying now.

I am a fan of Tolkien’s work, you know- all that Lord-of-the-Ringish, Hobbity, Silmarillionesque stuff. I did use to write poetry in up to three different languages, some were good, some were bad and some I like or dislike depending on the mood, but I usually didn’t edit too much. Maybe out of a sense of self-importance and a weird grasp on creativity in art- or you can just call me lazy if you will, either will do and I’m sure I have hown all those tendencies at some point or another.

Why did I leave this place where you can get little haertsies for pouring out your sad emotions, your happy emotions or any form of emotion in any text there is, really? I don’t quite know. Honestly I like the concept, it’s utterly shallow, sure and I won’t become a great writer of you al support my lazyness and self-importance (which I actually don’t really want to), but it’s also profoundly human. It’s a little utopia. A little shire, if you want to come back to Hobbitses (and this is official Gollum-plural). This is beautiful.

All those fucked up souls and mental wrecks here, or at least those who pretend to be such get positive feedback in their actions- or even better, moral support. Which they probably can use better, for some of their striving s disturbingly detrimental and not going to help them in any manner.

If you were looking for reasons to leave, sure there would be plenty: This place is shallow and cringy at it’s core, full of pretentious little artists amongst whom I have counted myself and I can proudly say- I still am a pretentious little artsist from time to time. People here honestly think brainy is the new sexy and take a Tony Stark as an example. Yeah he plays a brainy arrogant prick, but he mostly is rich, that’s the sex appeal. Same for Loki, the Hiddleston guy.

And I know. I come just back here on this plattform, ranting a bit becaus eit feels good on short notice and actually I don’t contribute to harmony etc. right now.

Actually I might have said a few things which have seriously offended one or another person- if that is- anyone has read this bullshit text.

So why’d I come back? I’m not back in that sense. It’s a note in my journal, that’s what it is. And this is not an actual journal, it’s a metaphor for me leaving something here and probably never reading it again.

Am I a bitter person?

Well sometimes I am, yes, so have I observed. Though I do not think of myself as such. I used to be a positiv child, that is my belief and- what child is not positive at some point in its life? Most children have every reason to be positive about... things.

To the point:

Yesterday I looked at myself and realised- let me use another Tolkien metaphor here even though I am aware I have extended the privilege quite enough: I am not only not the young bright Arragorn I imagined myself becoming as a kid, but I am rather turning into a Gollum creature tacked back in the misty mountains cave off my room, with the one ring of Netflix and losing even the taste of good food. I haven’t eaten an apple in a long time! Though I had an avocado yesterday and a really good salad before that, so I think this is where the comparison might stop.

You know I did use to do martial arts- not to worry it was only for my own content- and I did get a rather appealingly shaped body, I wasn’t strong or ripped or anything gorgeous like them fitness guys bloating around like coqs (I’m fairly sure this is the French spelling, I can’t seemt tom remember the English one) on an animal farm. But I was in rather fine physical shape. And my body was... probably appealing. To some. Not the great majority, I wouldn’t go as far, but some.

And now I don’t du martial arts, I eat a lot less well than I used to- miracle- this isn’t my mom’s stove anymore so I cook when I had time and the grace to make an effort. And so my muscles are fairly thin, I lost about half my strength and it only shows a little bit, but I’m convinced in training I would soon come to realise my limits have shifted.

And that’s a bad thought.

And honestly i have two easy ways to feeling better: I could get out and do something for myself or I could get to work in here and - oh look, it’s raining, suddenly it’s more appealing to stay and studdy for university instead- but I get locked up in front of... books and series... and movies... so I don’t do shit in the end.

And at the same moment I feel this reticance... why do you care? why should I care? Couple thousand years ago and I’d have been living about half my life, so what’s the deal? And yeah, I’m 20 experiencing the pressure of puberty, feeling like I can look through the whole system including the ridiculous part that I play myself. And that’s the point.

I am hyper aware of my actions and their consequences, I am aware of other people’s actions, I am aware of a big chunk of modern society and I could now write you an essay about how to achiev in the system I live in. But I’m too lazy to care and I don’t feel like it.

So yeah- I am angry at myself. Probably. According to myself I am, so I must be right? And I know I don’t need to be. Same as...

Actually that’s a good point, I’m in puberty, I ddon’t like it, I write because I feel like I suck and I know I don’t or at least I don’t need to cause I could just walk out here and perform, but I can’t because... brains be brains, right?

And I don’t like people expecting me to do anything. And I don’t like competition either. I don’t like competing about grades, jobs, money, social status or female encounters. Which the last one I luckily don’t have to anymore, I just have to keep being myself, which I find a slightly more odd form of cometition because my competition is my self.

You know all those boys talking “Tell me about women?”. Ya, well tell me about boys. Tell me about myself. Seriously, I like when people try to get a grasp of me I used to like the part of myself, where you can’t stick me in a box, cause it’s like putting water in a basket.

“I shall remain freeee!” - And never seize my freedom because puberty forces me to take a harsh looka the manner in which I seize my oh so well accomplished freedom. Uhhh hate my brilliant brain (it’s just above average, not brilliant, my IQ is about 120, or was last I checked).

So this pittyful document of my puberty shall remain here until some company tries to get a grasp at me. Good luck trying guys ^^

No I seriously usually am a nice guy, I just don’t get a grip on myself lately, but even now I perform according to task. Or almost.

Should I check my spelling, because I just couldn’t have cared less while writing? Ahhh meh.

#duh #puberty #tell me about it #hashtags suck #i should serously stop swearing #and why do i keep doing it when i write in english?#pop culture has gotten a hold on me #good to know anyone has #i certainly haven't #hahaha #why do i just keep writing my text in the hastags?#idk #anyway #better get going #^^

71 notes · View notes

janiedean · 6 years

Note

Hi Janie! So, I admit to a bit of ignorance pertaining the whole “anti”-debacle. I’ve seen anti and anti-anti posts that say the same thing, sometimes it’s about morally offensive things, sometimes about completely unrelated stuff and I can’t make heads nor tails of it, especially since there isn’t really a wealth of actual information? Just rants... *sigh* If it’s possible, do you think you could explain what the problem is? (Does that need to be in plural?) and the „sides“? Thank you! ❤️

anon you asked the question of the century I’m afraid X°D THAT SAID let’s... see if I can make this understandable.

so: the anti debate is... pretty much tied to the whole ‘politics in fandom discourse’ and you can’t separate the two of them sadly. of course I come from the not anti side of fandom so what do I know. anyway, premise:

what happened is that in the last two/three years, whether we liked it or not, the debate in fandom has moved from ‘my ship is better than yours’ to ‘my ship is better than yours because it’s more progressive/woke’, which has gone hand in hand with the political fandom views of any media product, ie ‘you can’t watch that because it lacks representation’ or ‘that show is crap because it’s not woke enough or doesn’t treat that topic well’ and so on, and with a tendency to think that if you ship anything you want it to be canon because it only is worth anything if it becomes such (which imo is bullshit but never mind);

this has moved on to also judging people based on their ships, as in: ‘ship X is wrong because it’s problematic for X reason therefore if you ship it you support X irl and you’re problematic and you need to be stopped’. such as ‘thor/loki is wrong because it’s incest so if you ship thor/loki you’re okay with incest irl and you want to bang your siblings if you have any’, which is a ridiculous notion but this goes also hand in hand with the fact that people have suddenly decided to trash all the psychology that confirmed how violent videogames don’t influence reality and now think that liking something problematic influences you irl because they don’t grasp the difference between fandom and mass-media consumption of a mass-media product;

they also don’t grasp the concept of catharsis through media nor of the really basic concept that most normal people who see themselves in fiction don’t take the entire package but relate to specific things;

keeping THAT in mind:

the whole ‘anti’ thing, as ‘people being opposed to a ship or a trend’ is basically people saying that you cannot ship a thing or be into a problematic character or kink because it says something about you and not about your fictional preferences and actively go around being assholes to people who ship the thing while at the same time gatekeeping/policing their own ships which are of course Purer Than The Others and bringing politics into it, too;

this also goes with a frankly problematic (AND I’M USING THE WORD NON-IRONICALLY) attitude that those people have of equating age gaps with pedophilia always and considering children people older than thirteen/fourteen, which automatically makes them think of people who ship age gaps even in between adults pedophiles (I kid you not a friend who’s over thirty in a rship with a person fifteen years older got told that their rship was pedophilia because their partner was an adult when they were a child at some point in their lives. I mean, IMAGINE THAT.);

to give the to-go example these days because it’s sadly the worst: sw sequel trilogy fandom. rey/kylo has been targeted by antis as the to-go Most Problematic Ship because in order:a) enemies to lovers as a trope which is of course abusive if the good side is a woman (more on that later) b) both are white (so it’s racist to not ship her with the non-white people in the light side *roll eyes*)c) they have a ten years age gap (so it’s pedophilia even if rey’s of age and she kicked his ass more than once)d) he’s not technically good looking so it sets people’s worst instincts offe) these people don’t buy into the fact that people can be redeemed so they decided he’s absolutely Not Redeemable and so onf) it’s an m/f couplenow, rey/lo is admittedly a fairly tame ship as far as problematic goes - it’s honestly your typical enemies to friends to lovers trope that’s been in media since the beginning of time, but according to these ppl it’s The Worst and if you dare being into it you must be a pedophile, racist, misogynist (or internalized misogynist), straight person (because of course only straight ppl ship m/f) - and yes, being straight is a problem but more on that later. but since you can ship her with finn (black) or you could ship finn and poe (black and latino actors) if you’re not into either you’re problematic. too bad that if you ship finn and poe (WHICH I DO) these days it’s... let’s just say I’ve seen a list of ‘problematic f/p writers’ where the reasons for the PROBLEMATIC was that they took a fluff ship and wrote it dubcon. oKAY. also pre tlj fandom was full of block lists for r/eylo shippers where you’d get the name plus ALL REASONS WHY THEY HAD TO BE HARASSED OUT OF FANDOM which you will imagine does not sit well with me since that’s... like... the most fascist thing you could do (NO REALLY BAN LISTS OF PERSONE NON GRATAE WITH REASONS WHY THEY WERE IS A THING THAT HAPPENS IN DICTATORSHIPS AND SOCIETY WHERE EVERYTHING IS CENSORED LIKE BANNED BOOKS) in this circumstance, but hey, if you’re anti-reylo and you’re doing the above you’re just doing the work of the lord because you’re saving people from the Horrible Problematic Ship, and meanwhile I don’t want anything to do with a fandom where people do block lists for how you write your fanfic IN GENERAL. like, concrit is more than welcome but lists? please don’t fucking kid me;

I used r/eylo as an example because it’s the epitome of what anti-shipping ends at, but there’s also sh/eith from voltron which is two guys, with a seven years age gap but both are adults now and were older than 15 when they met, who have the sweetest less problematic relationship ever and people who ship.. the other rival ship decided that it’s pedophilia, SUPPORTS INCEST on the grounds of one of the two tell the other ‘you’re like a brother to me’ SERIOUSLY and that it’s abusive and by shipping it you’re a pedophile. k;

also, this entire thing ties with the fact that these people seem to think that having sex when older than fourteen is somehow bad, which means that if you write someone under the age of 18 (and sometimes NOT EVEN THAT see voltron above) you’re automatically a *pedophile* even if teenagers aren’t children and fictional characters are fictional and never hurt anyone, and that goes hand in hand with the fact that these people seem to largely be against kink;

specifically: ‘bdsm is abusive’ (???), ‘you can’t be a feminist if you like kink’ (OKAY???), ‘if you read/write noncon fanfic you have a problem and you’re terrible’ etc, with a specific subset being against specific kinks that play on a certain angle ie daddy kink and so on which are PEDOPHILIA now, which is again an extremely puritanical way to see the world, not progressive;

at this point we have a situation where a bunch of *antis* specifically target people who are into *problematic* things whether it’s ships, characters, kinks and so on and are going like THINK OF THE CHILDREN half of the time. the children being them, of course.

at this point we have the other discourse we need to have ie about the age and sexuality of the people involved in fandom and why it matters:

now: a lot of fandom is made up of women. it’s statistics. a significant statistical part of the old guard (25+-30+ people ie my generation plus the previous 40+ older generation) is cis women (who can be straight or bi but are attracted to men) who went into fandom writing m/m slash. a significant part of this group is into either problematic ships or kink and such on. but in our understanding of fandom, the key terms were ship and let ship + your kink is not my kink + don’t like don’t read. as in: outside your usual MY SHIP IS BETTER THAN YOURS wank was generally understood that people liked things different than yours and that you had no business being an ass over it, and back in the day warnings were at the beginning - when I went into fandom warnings were not a thing. now there’s warnings everywhere which is GOOD and guess why ao3 was made by... the old guard/old fans, which of course are not very pleased with being told they’re pedophiles or perverts for shipping a thing or, *drum rolls*, that they fetishize gay men by shipping m/m or writing m/m porn, and are fairly vocal about it;

on the other side, this new wave of younger fans who thinks is progressive along with older fans who are assholes/most likely grooming the youngers (because this anti shipping thing is seriously cult-like at this point) calling the old generation all the stuff above and pushing the idea that they want ‘old straight ciswomen out of fandom’ because ‘they have gross ideas and THEY DON’T WANT TO READ OUR GROSS FIC’ and such things. we can also talk for ten years about how the new wave has decided that straight = insult but again, tumblr politics. all goes hand in hand;

so basically the sides are ‘younger fans who thinks they are progressive but are actually being puritan af’ vs ‘older fans who want to do their damned thing’ with some people obviously crossing into the others’s territory;

(and mind that not counting SW, most of the anti drama happens in fandoms for... animated cartoons and the likes - vo/ltron, ste/ven universe and so on, which says a lot about the age discourse, but nvm that);

now, the problem is that by telling some woman older than you that she can’t safely explore her sexual fantasies/kinks in fiction about fake characters you’re basically doing the same thing as policing women’s sexual fantasies that has been going on since the dawn of time, so it’s actually hella misogynist, and the fact that it goes with people saying that you can’t be a feminist who likes kink and that kink is abuse/misogynist... is still policing women’s sexualities, irl and fictionally, and that’s what they’re doing at the end of it;

on top of that, they’re also policing what non-straight, non-female fans who ship problematic stuff do and most of all, there’s the shipping to cope bush of thorns.

about shipping to cope:

now, this entire system had to, at some point, deal with the very true fact that a lot of people who are into problematic stuff/kinks/noncon (not all of them of course) engage with that material to work out their issues - a lot of the time it’s abuse victims writing it to elaborate on their abuse and take control of it and so on and usually... a lot of them aren’t even straight (honestly, almost everyone I know who ships th/ramsay ie noncon torture ship that I personally don’t like myself is... not straight, and a lot of them do ship to cope) and telling them you cannot handle your recovery with whichever system they see fit is... RUDE at best. which is why there’s antis who are like ‘shipping to cope is fine but JUST IF IT’S TO COPE’ which means that in order to be given the green light you have to out yourself and tell people you were abused and other antis who are like ‘SHIPPING TO COPE IS WRONG BECAUSE YOU JUST MAKE IT WORSE’ which is... not a thing that happens to everyone and actually every psychologist worth their salt in the world disagrees (or better: for some people it’s bad to do but for others it’s cathartic, and the latter shouldn’t be not able to do it because the former can’t blacklist or because kids on the internet decided that shipping to cope is bad);

so a lot of antis are actually crossing into the territory of wanting to police how people handle their own experience of abuse (honestly once someone told a friend who explained them from a professional pov the valid of problematic/violent art as a cathartic, healthy way to deal with you shit, and who told them that they were an abuse victim who dealt with it in different ways, to GO ON GOOGLE AND LOOK UP HOW IT WORKS and that person knew shit about it period just to say one) and telling people they can’t process their abuse in THAT way but just in THIS way, feeding into the idea that there’s a right way to process abuse and a wrong way to react to it which in turns becomes good victim vs bad victim;

(and then you wonder why they hate kylo ren... who’s a Bad Victim under the definition of the word but hey whatever)

and this is all thrown under the rug of ‘we need to police problematic attitudes in fandoms’ which is 100% bullshit because if you run into someone specifically problematic you should explain them on a one-on-one basis, not do the witch hunt, and you should never presume to police how people handle their own shit, never mind that 90% of the time the so-called problematic material is consumed by a small percentage of people and you can choose to like, not read it;

and by the way, 90% of the actually problematic fandom trends don’t get called out because it wouldn’t be progressive (I can talk for ages about how it’s really worrying that ppl headcanon characters as X following stereotypes that are actually hurtful for the category in question but since the hc = a minority then it’s always okay) but that’s an entire other problem;

tldr: the anti side, as much as they want to think they’re not doing it, are actively policing the content that other people put online based on supposed ‘moral’ standards which 90% of the time aren’t even true (a 16yo in a relationship with a 20yo is NOT pedophilia period) and even going as far as ‘I’ll press charges to the FBI because X wrote underage fic’ when according to the US law if it’s fictional characters it doesn’t count as such and it only does if real recognizable minors are involved (and in that case it shouldn’t be happening in the first place) and those people might be whoever, and for all they support feminism they also end up being incredibly misogynist.

or, just because I like to use my own experiences as an example: this year I had the horrid idea of replying to a post made obviously by anti people where I told them that straight women writing m/m ie what they’re attracted to of course have more in common with a guy into guys in that sense and not with a lesbian since they’re not attracted to women and that writing m/m wasn’t inherently fetishizing shit. since then I’ve had people:

informing me I MUST have internalized homophobia

assuming shit about my sex life that wasn’t even true including which positions I like in bed (because of course straight women only identify with the gay bottom so they’re capitalizing off that experience when some of us don’t)

assuming I was disgusted at the idea of writing lesbian sex (false, I wrote it when I was in the mood)

informing me that writing fanfic about canonical m/m characters wasn’t activism and I shouldn’t presume I was one for that (I never said I considered it such) but at the same time these people think reporting incest fic to ao3 is... activism, but nvm that

telling me that I was a sad old bitch who needed to find a husband and grow up (I MEAN NOT EVEN IN THE FIFTIES) (I’m 29 btw hardly old) because it was the only way my life could have had sense

informing me that of course I was that horrible since I’m italian and all italians beat their wives (NOT XENOPHOBIC AT ALL)

accusing me of writing torture porn with gay characters to get off (never wrote torture porn once in my life, not with gay characters nor any character)

(most ppl I know into torture porn aren’t straight btw)

telling me that I didn’t understand my own attraction to men

assuming that my parents must have thrown me out of the house at some point, that I had no friends and that I never got laid

and in another occasion I got sent fanart of a ship that I said upset me because I had the gall to tell people to leave the shippers alone but hey what do I know

and a bunch of other stuff I won’t bother you with but that to me sounds hella misogynist (I mean, GO BACK TO THE KITCHEN AND FIND A HUSBAND, srsly?). spoilers: I never write noncon, I’m into a few kinks but most are literally harmless, the wildest thing I’m into writing is... 100% consensual d/s sex, the most problematic thing I’m into is thor/loki and I hadn’t shipped it until I realized that... it was cathartic (ps: no, I don’t think irl incest is okay as a general thing) and for the rest I’m famous for... being the person who almost never kills people in fandom X°D I mean, I got that shit and I laughed about it, but what if they sent it to an abuse victim or someone who actually got kicked out of the house? who knows, but sure af they only seem to care about victims when it’s convenient to them and when the victims agree. *shrug* but the above is absolutely okay if you tell that to a straight cis woman who doesn’t particularly feel like writing f/f sex (which is ANOTHER plot point but never mind that I can’t possibly go into how tumblr has decided that f/f relationships without sex are the Thing Everyone Should Aspire To and everything else is a problem including lesbians having kinky sex). anyway, that was all antis. heck, a round of the shit above was started because an anti-ship blog found an oldass ask related to that wank, so.

tldr: the point is that we’re always talking about the same old dumb fandom war ie my ship is better than yours and my fave is better than yours, but now the arguments aren’t just about ships, are about which one is most moral or pure or non-problematic and if you dare being into anything else for your own reasons in your own life (I forgot friends who’ve been told they abuse their partners because they’re into kink, WHAT A DAY) when the *else* is fictional (ie doesn’t exist) and you don’t even do the thing irl or would want to but just want to explore it fictionally, then you are that problematic thing and so *you* are problematic and guess what, there’s a nice witch hunt starting and -

ops.

HOW SURPRISED I AM.

I mean, it’s 90% wanting to censor people and all of that time it’s useless that they dress it as ‘FIGHTING PEDOPHILES’ because thing is, now that everyone rolls their eyes at it because you think ‘right, real pedophiles or people who ship the wrong voltron ship,’ actual pedophiles have free reign and actually whenever I see a post to report a real one it has very little notes in comparison to OMG REY/LO IS PROBLEMATIC and stuff, and the one time I got linked one I checked because I didn’t trust tumblr and let me tell you I wish I didn’t. anti shipping or being anti kink is just... 90% wanting to be puritans without knowing that you’re a puritan and you’re still policing women’s sexualities and abuse victims’s reactions and you’re not helping anyone.

and you sound like those soccer moms from the 90s who thought playing tekken made their kids violent or that marilyn manson’s music caused the columbine shootings which is a thing that has been disproved since two weeks after it happened. and these people have no idea that media influences you to the point you let it and that fiction is not reality. *shrug* and that was my offer to this contribution, I know I’ll get roasted at this point but I’m beyond giving two fucks at this point. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#social justice calvinist #the discourse TM #the discourse™️#abuse cw #reylo for ts #star wars wank for ts #Anonymous #ask post

27 notes · View notes

moonviewcrew · 2 years

Text

more Struggling™ with origin thoughts.

I've realized over time that shit that I went through in my childhood does "count" as trauma and continues to affect me to this day. And it was even at an 'early enough' stage of my life. And yet I know literally the exact day I heard of tulpamancy and the exact day I decided to form Jay (from diaries), and that was about 4 yrs ago when I was in high school. So we're not traumagenic.

However since then we've had the rest of our headmates form from nowhere except basically stress. So it's like I had to open the gate for my brain to use plurity as a coping mechanism. BUT another part of me wonders if I did have "plural tendencies" (dunno how to phrase it) as a child but not realize it? Cuz I remember things like getting entirely lost in my own head to the point of phasing out reality around me, or things like looking in the mirror and being surprised I had a different body than in my head. But I don't have any headmates from before Jay. Closest I had was a very very personified plushie but she's not exactly around anymore, plus it normal for kids to talk to a teddy bear or whatever.

Honestly the whole 'endogenics are secretly traumagenic' narrative might just be messing me up and making me search for things that aren't there, but I need to write it all down instead of just letting it tumble around in my brain. I'm probably grasping at straws to feel more valid or something. Idk. I'm also very sleepy right now so I should head off to bed but a certain headmate suddenly has a lot of creative drive so lmao we'll see.

#lev rambling #endogenic safe #plurality #parogenic #system stuff #i should stick to my guns about dropping origin labels at all but i Have to Know

1 note · View note

xgenesisrei · 6 years

Text

Losing Religion

Speech by Bishop Ambo David for the Philippine Psychiatric Association

“Thank you for inviting me today to share some thoughts on the topic: “Losing One’s Religion: Agnosticism and Atheism in the Young Persons”. Allow me to start by familiarizing you with the typical lines in a dialogue between a priest like myself and young persons, especially young professionals, who declare that they have turned either into agnostics or atheists.

Very often it’s their devout Catholic parents who persuade them to make an appointment with a priest, perhaps hoping that we could still get their children to go back to Church. Usually, they’d start by politely saying in all candor, “Father, I’m doing this to please my mother. But to be honest with you, I wish she’d give up trying to persuade me to return to Church. I’ve lost my faith already.” Then I ask: “What do you mean?” The typical answer would be, “I’ve stopped going to Church since several years ago already. I’ve no intention of going back, even if my mother keeps warning me that I might go to hell for it. I also don’t intend to practice any other kind of religion. Let’s just say I’ve outgrown it. She can’t scare me anymore with hellfire or the wrath of angry god. I’ve decided to just try to live a meaningful life, do what I believe I should do as a human being who’s trying to be good.”

For my part, my usual line would be “Maybe you mean you’ve lost religion, not faith.” And the reaction would be,”What’s the difference?” And I’d proceed to explain, “Religion is probably something that was imposed on you, something you did not choose. And so now you choose to get out of it because you don’t find it meaningful anymore. That makes sense” And what about faith? “Faith is something that cannot be imposed on anybody. It’s a choice. You can’t call it faith if you did not choose it freely. As we understand it in Christian tradition, faith is a human response to God. How will you respond if you did not perceive, first of all, that somebody is talking to you? Faith usually begins with an awakening to a personal God, and to the idea that your life is a gift, that you are not a mere accident in this world. There is someone who willed your birth, someone who created the world, you, and the rest of humankind and creation, with a purpose. And you realize that you achieve that purpose somehow when you strive to grow into a dignified human being, when you learn to love and develop a sense of meaning in life. Isn’t that precisely what you are looking for now? Could it be that you’re losing your religion precisely because you’re discovering your faith? You mentioned about ‘trying to live a meaningful life, do what you believe you should do as a human being, and about trying to be good.’ That is what faith is mostly about. And when you call it Christian faith, it means you’re trying to learn how to be a good human being, following the path of Jesus Christ.

Faith is about following a way of life, a spirituality. For Jesus Christ, that way of life is about living life “on earth as it is in heaven”, by learning to love unconditionally. Meaning—it is not enough to care for those related to you, or those who love you back. What matters is to learn to accept, respect, love, and live with every fellow human being in this world unconditionally, no matter what their race, social status or religion might be. That is why we qualify it as a Catholic faith—meaning, universal or inclusive. It is founded on the belief that salvation (or wellbeing, in plain language) is for everybody, not just for a select few. That every human being is a child of God, that God is about intending what is good—not just for a few but for all, not just for fellow human beings but for all fellow creatures as well. Christianity believes that God is love, and that the most godless people are not necessarily those without religion but those who are without love.”

From experience, when I say things this way, I am able to generate some bit of interest in young people to listen. Something like, “Ok, now you’re talking.” Or, “How come they never taught me that?” And my usual answer is, “Maybe you were still too young for it.” Or “Maybe you’re beginning to outgrow religion precisely to discover your faith.” I usually explain to them that religion is a belief system or structure that is meant precisely to nurture one’s faith. Unfortunately, in some instances, it can also serve the opposite effect, such as when people pass on a belief system in its naive or immature form. Some people, for instance, can get stuck to the notion of a punishing God (meaning, he rewards only the good), or even a whimsical God (meaning, he punishes people for no reason whatsoever, including the innocent). All throughout history, people have always had an issue with the issue of the suffering of the innocent—why would such things happen, if there is God? And then they begin to react to the seeming futility, or even the hypocrisy of trying to be good at all. I think of this as a kind of adolescent stage in the growth of the human spirit.

(It does usually happen much earlier in us human beings. Some people can get stuck in this stage and never manage to get out of it. It is such people who can wreak a havoc in society and turn almost fanatical or even genocidal. Their adolescent reaction to an oppressive belief system can reinforce some violent tendencies that can even be translated into political convictions or approaches to policy-making in society.)

In his famous philosophical treatise entitled, “Thus Spake Zarathustra”, the philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, describes what he calls the “metamorphosis of the human spirit” as a process that involves three stages: camel, lion, & child. Nietzsche describes the initial stages of the development of the human spirit as the CAMEL stage. We begin our spiritual journey like beasts of burden that are made to carry a heavy load of traditions on our backs. We are made to believe that these are a necessity if we are to succeed in making a long and arid desert journey. Unquestioningly, we accept the things our parents have always presupposed as true and worthy of belief, such as their religion.

At some point, Nietzsche says, we transition into the LION stage. “Losing religion” and the tendency for young persons to develop a semblance of agnosticism or atheism, or an inimical reaction towards established religions and belief systems is a normal aspect of the development of the human psyche. It is the stage which Nietzsche associates with the lion, the phase when we develop the courage to question unquestioned presuppositions, to assert our freedom from the inherited traditions that we have obediently carried like a heavy weight. It is during this stage when we find ourselves deliberately making an effort to hurt people’s sensibilities about things they regard as holy or sacred, when we get obsessed about exposing religion as nothing but a set of lies and hypocritical practices. The French philosopher Paul Ricoeur refers to this as the stage of critical consciousness, when we lose what he calls our “first naivete”, when we aggressively try to tear down what we used to take hook-line-and-sinker from parents, teachers, and pastors. It is the phase when we learn to deconstruct belief systems and use our analytical faculties as rational beings in order to distinguish between what is factual and what is mythical. Often, religion is reduced to what is mythical. It is during this stage that people begin to lose the infantile expressions of religiosity, hopefully in order to discover faith. The transitioning into faith is not always automatic, however. There are those who remain “agnostic” or “atheistic” and never transition into faith. They claim to be satisfied with basic forms of humanism (which, to my view is also a form of faith—perhaps faith in the basic goodness of humanity.). It may not go with a religion but it is still a kind of faith, nevertheless. These are the type who will find allies among the more mature believers. They may no longer feel the need to debunk religious pietism but they would consciously distance or dissociate themselves from it. They may not feel comfortable returning to it, but they no longer mind those who practice it.

At some point, we may attain a final stage of integration which Paul Ricoeur, calls a “second naïveté”. This represents the kind of maturation process which, for Nietzsche, accompanies the emergence of the playful, unburdened, and no-longer angry CHILD. The human spirit in its CHILD stage, for Nietzsche, outgrows its violent reaction to religion and traditional belief systems. It develop what Ignatius Loyola calls “holy indifference” to religious pluralism, because it is anchored on way of life that puts a prime on tolerance and respect. They do not mind being with people who have belief systems other than theirs, as long as they can still treat each other as brothers and sisters.

Despite the fact that the lion stage is a pretty stressful phase in the growth of the human psyche, its relevance for spiritual growth remains indisputable. You see, just as we mentioned earlier, not all religion nourishes faith. Some of it can be destructive too. After all, not all religion is really about God. Some of it can be a sheer manifestation of people’s collective neuroses or psychoses. Yes, there can be such a thing as a faithless, godless religion. We’re no strangers to sick expressions of religion, such as extremism, personality cults, millennarism, fanaticism. These are the tendencies that are quickly detected by the Lion stage.

You invited me to share how I, as a theologian, deal with young people who claim to have lost religion and have become agnostics or atheists. Honestly I think the topic is really more of a psychological than a theological issue. I’d be interested in your own thoughts about it, and I hope some of you can share a little about it during the open forum. Thank you for your kind attention.”

0 notes